SONG CREDITS (In Order of Appearance)
Stevie Wonder - Visions (1973)
Sam Cooke - A Change Is Gonna Come (1964)
Louis Armstrong [Originally by Fats Waller] - (What Did I Do To Be So) Black & Blue (1929)
Little Simz - Persons (2015)
Kendrick Lamar - Momma (2015)
Vince Staples - Life Me Up (2015)
PROCESS
Upon first reading the article, I was struck by the upbeat tone Morris used to define our progress, hailing a surge in depictions of the underrepresented in pop culture as a great leap away from our storied past. Although the author does acknowledge that we as a people have a long way to go, I felt that he gave more credit than was due to blockbuster movies and hit TV shows for shifting the current conversation on race and gender. I flipped Morris' examples on their head with my choice of secondary text by taking tokens of modern black success and comparing their words with the words performers that came before them. I chose to highlight the lack of progress by contrasting the lyrics of songwriters from different eras that highlight the same struggles. Their words spell out a story contrary to Morris’, suggesting that there is still a disconnect between between America’s perceived progress and the lived reality of black Americans.
I knew I wanted to manipulate the photographs of the artists with the addition of another type of imagery and did some preliminary tests with vector shapes. They were interesting but held no conceptual weight.
I moved away from vector illustration which felt too clean for my sources and settled on crayon. It felt raw and unfinished in a way that went well with the concept of identity. This naturally lead me to using my own handwritten type for the lyrics to emphasize the personal content.
I struggled to create a layout that kept the reader engaged throughout the article rather than having loud moments of imagery interspersed with plain typeset text. I tried different arrangements of the body copy but felt that these gave it an unrefined rather than offbeat look.
I knew I was going through so many disparate versions because none were fully grounded in my idea. I needed to create a system that made each spread feel fresh. I looked back at the text to remind myself what I was trying to say: that Morris defined our identity as changing while my secondary source proved some things to be constant. I decided to apply this to the text treatment, creating a modular layout that could shift drastically while operating within the confines of a system and settled upon highlighting the text using a roving red box. I wanted the callouts to read in an authoritative voice that was still seen as an opinion, so I decided to create a set of sturdy handwritten letterforms for Morris’ pull quotes. These contrasted nicely with the more emotional feel of the handwritten song lyrics.
Next I needed to address the imagery. I based this largely on the idea of multiple perceptions of self, something touched on by both the lyrics and the article. I overlaid many of the images with a "second skin” of dotted lines, representing the ever-present difference in the one's self image and the way others see you.
